Has Rohr And Super Eagles Come To The End Of The Road?

Its been three years run between Nigeria’s Super Eagles and Gernot Rohr at the Nigeria helm.

How has it been as the team lost to Algeria aftermath of the AFCON tournament in Egypt 2019?

Rohr took over the Nigerian job in 2016 with lots of expectations before the start of the group stage of the 2018 World Cup qualifiers was around the horizon.

This wasn’t made easier as anticipations were high among Nigerians due to the Eagles tough World Cup qualifying group.

Rohr passed his first test on a satisfactory note beating lowly ranked Tanzania 1-0 at home in Uyo thanks to a Kelechi Iheanacho’s solitary goal.

This was a dead rubber match as the team failed to qualify for African Cup of Nations in 2017 which was eventually won by Cameroon.

This left more to be desired from the Super Eagles as the main picture began in October with Nigerians all watching with fingers crossed.

The Super Eagles started on a bright note winning the first match in the group that contained Africa heavyweights Zambia, Algeria and rivals Cameroon.

They beat Zambia home and away and went on qualify from the group with a game to spare against Algeria, their semi-final opponent at the just concluded AFCON 2019 in Egypt.

Rohr and his side took the group by storm beating Algeria 3-1 and Cameroon 4-0 respectively to the delight of many Nigerians.

But at the World Cup, the Eagles failed to fly even when they met a disillusioned Argentina side merely looking for respite to qualify from the group as they were already wounded by a Luka Modric led Croatian side.

The signs of the poor outing at the World Cup was predictable as the team began to lose pre-world friendlies to the dismay of some Nigerians that watched on ahead of the tournament.

This same thing happened in the AFCON as the team struggled for creativity and attacking fluency in order to score goals as the team lost to Madagascar and managed a 1-0 win over Burundi and Guinea.

Though the Eagles qualified for the AFCON itself with a game to spare it was based on a remedy measures as the team had to buckle up since after losing to Stuart Baxter’s Bafana Bafana in the first AFCON qualifying games.

There was the need for improvement for the Gernot Rohr tutored side but it was relatively ignored as Nigeria faced a lackluster pre-AFCON friendlies ahead of the AFCON.

This was seen as they drew 0-0 with Zimbabwe and lost 1-0 to deserved finalist Senegal.

How far Rohr and the Super Eagles can go remains to be seen as some level of weakness are yet to be addressed within the team.

This has really haunted the team even as we have seen it resurface again in the
AFCON with the side failing to kill off the quarter-final match against South Africa in due time.

Obiweluozo Martins